Kingdom Keepers Boxed Set

by Ridley Pearson

  “Like nervous girls?” Willa said.

  “We have to warn Charlene,” Finn said.

  “Not with the flashlight,” Philby cautioned. “That’ll backfire.”

  Willa quickly tried to reach Charlene by phone. She shook her head. “Must have turned it off when we nixed it.”

  Finn felt responsible for that decision. He toed a rock free of the dirt at their feet and picked it up. “What if we could distract the snake? Turn him around so he doesn’t see our flashlights?”

  “I think it may be too late for that,” Amanda said. She was looking off toward Maybeck, and when Finn looked in that direction he saw what she had seen: a small white light flashing three times, pausing, and flashing the same signal again. Maybeck was relaying Charlene’s signal.

  “She thinks everything’s okay,” Finn gasped.

  “And maybe it is,” Philby said. “Maybe it isn’t the Overtakers inside, but Wayne. Maybe the snake is on his own, patrolling Wonders for the Overtakers, sure, but not with them.”

  “That would be a lucky break,” Finn said.

  “Only one way to test it,” Philby pointed out.

  Finn nodded. He extended the flashlight through the wall of leaves and pushed its button once, signaling: danger.

  THE AREA OF THE BUSHES where they’d seen Maybeck’s flashlight remained dark. But from the grass there appeared a silver gray flash of a different sort: snakeskin. As Philby had predicted, Gigabyte had seen the signal and had taken off in Maybeck’s direction to determine its source.

  “This is our shot,” Finn said. “Maybeck just bought us the front door. We can’t wait for Charlene.”

  “Are you nuts?” Willa said.

  “We go now!” Finn said. He reached out, took Amanda by the hand, and led her out of the shrubbery, somehow knowing that the others would follow—that Jess would stay with Amanda, and Philby would join him; Willa wasn’t going to remain in the bushes alone.

  Their DHIs sprinted across the lawn, jumped a rail, and hurried up the ramp leading to the pavilion’s front door. All of them were panting, and Philby bent over to catch his breath.

  “Give me two seconds,” Finn said, closing his eyes and attempting to settle himself into all-clear. But it required a profound depth of concentration, mixed with a surrender and the subsequent removal of any fear. Standing in the dark, in front of an enormous abandoned pavilion with a fifteen-foot python somewhere out there, he found it difficult to picture the pinprick of light in the sea of darkness inside his eyelids.

  “How do we know it isn’t coming this way?” Willa asked.

  “Shh!” Philby understood the challenges of all-clear.

  “How do we know there isn’t something, someone, much worse inside?”

  Amanda tapped Willa on the shoulder and pointed to Jess who, standing alongside Finn, had her eyes squeezed shut.

  “I know that look: she’s picking up on something,” Amanda whispered so softly that not even Philby could hear her.

  In the gloomy darkness, Jess’s right hand reached for her back pocket and pulled out a small spiral notebook, her eyes still pinched shut. Her left hand found a mechanical pencil in her front pocket and, as she slowly came out of her trance, began to sketch.

  Finn passed through the glass of the pavilion’s front door and turned to face them. He could be seen taking a deep breath. He tried to push the door’s panic bar, to open it, but his hand slid right through the glass barrier, and he pulled it back inside. He shook his arms.

  “It’s coming back,” Willa announced, pulling Philby and the others down to a crouch.

  Philby peered out to see the silver python slithering toward them at a high speed. “Stay down,” he said.

  Finn tried a second time, and his glowing arms went right out the door. The third time was the trick: the door opened.

  The others slipped inside and Philby quietly pulled the door closed. Willa backed her way through the door, never taking her eyes off Gigabyte.

  “Look!” she said pointing. “Where’s he going?”

  The python reached the path and headed off, his body maintaining a giant S-shape yet still propelling himself forward, moving toward the center of the park away from the pavilion.

  “Reinforcements. If we could follow him—”

  “He might lead us to the Overtakers,” Philby concluded for Finn.

  “And maybe Wayne.”

  “You can’t be serious!” Willa complained.

  “It’s too late,” Philby said. “He’s too fast. The only way we’d be able to follow him is at an all-out run, and he’d spot us.”

  Jess gasped and they all looked at her and her pencil that had stopped in the midst of making the sketch.

  “What is it?” Amanda asked.

  “It’s me…” Jess answered. “They’re coming for me.”

  For a moment Finn couldn’t think. His mind, free of all thought only seconds before, was bombarded with reality—the hardest part of going all-clear. It was like being jostled awake from the deepest sleep ever. Like waking up in the middle of a class only to realize the teacher has just called your name. He shook his head. His hands were doing the tingling thing, and his feet felt as if he were walking on a bed of a thousand needles.

  “Where?” he managed to say.

  “The image stopped,” Jess said, shrugging her shoulders. “The minute I realized it was me, the image stopped.”

  “We’ve got to get her back,” Willa said. “Cross her back over.”

  “We need her,” Finn said, without thinking. He looked at her, knowing the kind of pressure they were putting onto her, but not seeing any choice. They had come a long way to reach this moment. “It’s up to you.” They were where they were because of Jess’s original dream, because of her powers as a seer. He believed they needed her to search the pavilion, to confirm that they had the right place. “No one will hold it against you if you go. It’s probably the smart thing to do.”

  “They will come from my left side. Two of them. A man with a red beard and a green tunic, and a boy much like him wearing blue. I know that sounds ridiculous, but…”

  “Trust me,” Finn said. “Everything we do is ridiculous. No one would believe half of what we’ve seen.”

  “Vikings,” Philby whispered. “Norway. There’s a father-and-son display. It’s just about as she has described.”

  “What about…cavemen?” Jess asked. “I know that also sounds stupid but—”

  “Nothing is stupid,” Finn said. “You know that! Not here. Philby? Cavemen?”

  “Spaceship Earth. Another father-and-son team. In the scene, the two are looking at pictographs on cave walls. The guests see them from behind, never see their faces.”

  “They’re part of this too,” Jess declared.

  “Overtakers,” Willa and Finn said in unison.

  “How do we protect her?” Amanda said anxiously.

  “We know what to expect now,” Finn said. “Or who to expect.”

  “Keep them away from me, and I’m safe,” Jess said.

  “We don’t know that what she just saw will happen tonight,” Professor Philby pointed out, raising his index finger perfunctorily. “The future is longer than just the next few minutes.”

  “But what she saw could also happen tonight,” a troubled Amanda said.

  “If we stopped talking and started looking for Wayne,” Finn said, “tonight would be over a lot sooner.”

  Maybeck appeared at the top of the stairs and stopped abruptly. “I thought…” he whispered, seeing them already inside.

  “Change of plans,” Finn hissed back.

  Maybeck made a series of hand signals that apparently Finn was supposed to understand. He didn’t.

  “He and Charlene will stay upstairs,” Philby translated. “No sign of the Overtakers. Should we split up Jess and Amanda?”

  “You got all that,” Finn asked, bewildered, “from him pumping his fists a couple times?”

  “No. That last part w
as me. What about Jess upstairs, Amanda with us? If anyone comes after Jess, maybe we can act as decoys, buying Charlene time to get Jess out of here.”

  “Works for me,” Finn said. “Jess?”

  “Sure. Why not?” She gave a fleeting glance in the direction of Amanda and hurried up the stairs. Finn, Willa, Philby, and Amanda crept forward and moved past groupings of gray machines with bold white numbers on their fronts. Philby explained, a little heavy-handedly, that Wonders had been known for its interactive stations long before interactive was even a word. There were all sorts of games and demonstrations surrounding them that involved participation, but their plugs were pulled and they were stacked randomly together—it looked more like a technology graveyard than a Disney attraction.

  A doorway opened into a vast space beneath a dome.

  “This reminds me of The Land,” Willa said. “Only different.”

  A gray glow from the path lighting outside leaked through the skylights, playing on the contents like moonlight. At the center of the circular space was a theater; there were structures made to look like tents, and seats and tables; the whole pavilion was deserted in a way that suggested that the guests had fled in a hurry.

  “Creepy,” Willa said.

  “Times ten,” Amanda said.

  There was a sign for BODY WARS on the opposite wall in front of a queue with stanchions and chain.

  “It was originally all about stuff to do with health,” Philby said. “Body Wars, Cranium Command, The Making of Me. Some of it was really gross.”

  “A lot of places to hide a person,” Finn said.

  “And totally empty,” Philby said. “It’s pretty weird to see an entire pavilion totally empty.”

  “You think?” Willa snapped sarcastically.

  A whistle caught their attention. Finn looked behind them to the second floor—an enclosed sunroom that ran fully around the building. Maybeck was waving for them to come up.

  Philby gestured in hand signals. Maybeck gestured back.

  “Did I miss a class or something?” Finn asked.

  “He wants us all up there,” Philby said. “There’s something to see.”

  “That’s not so smart,” Finn said immediately. “We’re more effective in two groups. As a single group we’re vulnerable.”

  Philby nodded. He flashed Maybeck some hand signals, and Maybeck turned from the railing and disappeared.

  “Okay, Maybeck’s coming down,” Philby said. “You and Amanda will go up to Charlene and Jess.”

  Finn remained skeptical that Philby could have gotten that from Maybeck’s few quick gestures, but a moment later Maybeck appeared.

  “You’re not going to believe it,” Maybeck said.

  “Keep an eye out,” Finn said. “All phones on vibrate. Call me if there’s trouble.” He and Amanda took off.

  Finn and Amanda hurried back to the main doors and were halfway up the stairs when Finn tripped. He fell flat into the stone stairs and struggled to stand back up, desperate not to look too much like an uncoordinated dork. But Amanda crawled up his back and lay down on top of him, holding him down, squeezing the breath out of him, before sliding off to his side, her left arm still around him. “Outside!” she whispered.

  The exterior wall was glass. Finn edged his eye over the edge of the staircase and spotted what Amanda had seen: the giant gray python, squirming toward the pavilion, with four shapes following close behind. Two adults, two children, judging by their size.

  “Vikings and cave…people,” Finn said. He rolled over and quickly texted all the others.

  MAYDAY!

  Finn was lying face-to-face with Amanda, so close that he could smell a flowery sweetness. Her hand had seemed to burn his back where she’d touched him.

  Philby, Maybeck, and Willa appeared, moving toward the front door.

  “Pssst!” Finn caught Philby’s attention and tried his best to hand-signal him to crouch and hurry to join them. He then took Amanda’s hand and, bending low, the two raced for the top of the stairs.

  They ran down a hall and into a room where a real-life fabric circus tent had been erected inside the reception area. Beyond the circus tent, Charlene was waving them ahead.

  As Finn reached Charlene and Jess, the other three were fast on his heels. Finn stepped into what turned out to be a conference room with a long oval table surrounded by a dozen or more comfortable chairs. But it wasn’t the chairs or the table that caught his eye. It was the walls. They’d been painted with carousel horses from Mary Poppins, so he felt as if he were at the very center of a carousel, looking out.

  “Oh my gosh,” he said. “This is it.”

  He immediately identified the panel and chair that Jess had sketched in her diary. The resemblance was uncanny. She’d captured it perfectly.

  “But no code on the wall,” Jess pointed out. “Or if it’s there, we can’t see it.”

  “Maybe it’s invisible ink or it needs a special light or something in order to be seen,” Philby said.

  “And no Wayne,” Charlene said.

  “We’re out-a here, people,” Maybeck said as he arrived. “Those four aren’t sightseeing.”

  Finn said, “We’ll go down Charlene’s rope, as soon as we’re certain those four are inside.”

  “What four?” Charlene asked.

  “We’ll explain later,” Finn said.

  “We have visitors,” said Amanda. “Two sets of fathers and sons.”

  “And don’t forget the snake,” said Willa.

  “I’ll stand watch,” Maybeck offered. “The moment they enter the building, we go over the side.”

  “What about the snake?” Willa asked in a dry rasp.

  “I can deal with the snake,” Finn said. If he could maintain himself fully crossed over in all-clear, the snake would have nothing to attack.

  If, he thought.

  “Follow me!” Charlene said, leading them through a jumbled room where there were cloud figures on the wall.

  Jess stopped as if she’d hit a wall of glass.

  Finn grabbed her.

  She said, “I know this place. I’ve seen those shapes.” She pointed to a hot-air balloon and a spaceship—small plaster reliefs hanging on the wall about fifteen feet above the floor.

  “We’ve got to go,” Finn said, pulling her after him. They entered a spacious patio enclosed in walls of glass that met overhead like a greenhouse. One of the windows was open and Finn spotted Charlene’s rope looped over a pipe and doubled, dropping down to the ground.

  “Philby first. Then Jess, then Amanda.”

  No one argued with him. When Maybeck appeared, frantic and excited, Philby hooked the rope in his feet and lowered himself. Jess went next. They went quickly, in an orderly fashion, and Finn thought back to Wayne telling him that some people were born to lead and that he was one of those people. He hadn’t believed it at the time, but he was slowly coming around.

  “I’m last,” Charlene told him, when only the two of them remained. “I’ll take the rope out so they won’t even know we were here.”

  “How can you do that?” Finn asked.

  “Same as in climbing. I’ll loop the rope over a bar up top. We’ll climb on a double rope and then pulling it out is a matter of just tugging one end of it.”

  “But no funny business,” Finn said.

  “None,” she said.

  A moment later they were all in the shrubs at the base of the pavilion. Willa helped Charlene coil the rope.

  Then, from their left, a thick shape emerged, worming across the grass—Gigabyte. Finn tried his own sign language. He held up six fingers and then motioned toward the thick vegetation twenty yards across the open grass. Philby nodded to signal that he had understood. Maybeck pointed back at Finn and shrugged as if to say, What about you?

  Finn thumbed his own chest and then pointed at the fat gray python, its tongue slurping into the air, searching for a scent. Finn banged his fists together.

  At that instant, Gigabyte tu
rned toward the Kingdom Keepers.

  “Now!” Finn said.

  FROM THE MOMENT FINN took off running, he was afraid. He hated snakes. Any kind of snake gave him the weebies. A python as thick around as a basketball and nearly twenty feet long was the stuff of his worst nightmares—he’d never even had a dream that bad. Somewhere inside him he understood how stupid he’d been to offer to play the decoy. Somewhere in him he understood how fast a snake that big could travel across level ground and how if there were any small piece of him not fully crossed-over when the snake caught up to him—for Gigabyte would catch up to him no matter how fast he ran—that he would be caught, crushed, and consumed. But he ran straight at the snake, as fast as his legs would carry him.

  At first, Gigabyte didn’t see him, concentrating on the group of six others. The snake moved over the grass in an almost lazy motion, as if filled with such confidence that catching the kids was never in question, that instead it was only a matter of when, and how many, and what to do with them once they were caught. Such confidence terrified Finn; it was the confidence of a predator, a killer.

  Despite his proximity to the disgustingly large reptile, the beast didn’t turn in his direction. “Hey!” Finn shouted, trying to win his attention.

  The huge head pivoted toward Finn, one yellow eye taking him in, but the giant tube of his body kept sliding ahead, aimed now at a precise point directly ahead of Charlene, who had just overtaken Philby in the footrace to reach the jungle’s edge.

  It took Finn a second to realize what was happening: the snake wasn’t interested in having one kid for dinner when the opportunity for six remained only a few yards in front of him.

  “Scatter!” Finn shouted. With that, he briefly closed his eyes and summoned the locomotive’s light in the darkness—the pinprick of purity that would allow him to fully cross over to all-clear. Shutting his eyes also had the advantage of eliminating the snake from his view, and thereby removing it from his thoughts and from an imagination that could easily picture him as an appetizer ahead of the main meal Gigabyte would make of the others. Not only did Finn think he was about to die, he thought he was also about to fail in his campaign to save his friends.